Elastic frustration in self assembling system leads to fiber formation

Self-organization is essential for keeping living organism functional. Any mistake leads to severe disease such as Alzheimer. In this case, protein that are usually soluble start aggregating leading to fibril structures that are incompatible with the initial biological role of the protein. We try to understand this tendency that a wide variety of protein exhibit using a very general mechanism. Indeed, if on the one hand a surface tension energy would drive the aggregation, on the other hand, because of their ill fitting shape, proteins would need to deform to do so, which has a cost of elastic energy. Fiber like aggregate would therefore be a trade of between those two energies. Previous studies have already found that fiber like aggregate can have an energetic benefit over other shape, but here we investigate, using statistical physics tools, the thermodynamic properties of such fibers.